Beach Rock Cafe, Baie Des Citrons, Noumea

When Alfred dropped us back to the beautiful Baie Des Citrons (Lemon Bay) we certainly didn’t need lunch as we’d been to the patisserie and the milkshake shop and it seemed we’d been eating all day. However, across the road from the beach we saw a cafe in the very new retail complex, Le Mirage Plaza and unlike the other cafes we could see, this cafe was crowded with customers. I wondered what we were missing out on.

Le Mirage Plaza with the Beach Rock Cafe

So with stomachs already distended we crossed the road and walked into the Beach Rock Cafe which just might be a copy of another well-known franchise except these cafes all have beach views and you can sit outside enjoying the fresh air instead of being in an air-conditioned box.

Here’s Marilyn

This certainly was a touch of 1950’s USA in French New Caledonia and sitting in a vinyl booth reminded me very much of Happy Days and Grease.

A gas-station pump from yester-year

The prime seating position would have to be dining in the Chev Bel Air however, like I said, this cafe is popular and another family was enjoying that coveted position enormously so we sat instead in a turquoise-coloured vinyl booth.

Could they hurry along with that booth?

As much as this is a toast to everything that has put America on the world map, that’s not to say the menus are in English. The waitress spoke to us in French and we tried to understand. Miss Arabella did four years of French at school and understood less French than I did. And they say she is intelligent. What went wrong?

Jake and Elroy

I ordered the Santa Fe Burger (1,600CFP) which had salad, tomato, chicken (medallion de blanc de poulet, chilli sauce, swiss cheese and pureed avocado). Service is quick and it arrived in a deep-frying basket lined with artificial newspaper giving me the news in English from a Hawiian newspaper. It was from 1901 where it cost 1 cent to buy the newspaper in Honolulu and 2 cents to purchase it from any other Hawaiian island.

Santa Fe Burger

There were shoestring fries at the bottom of the basket and the burger was sitting on top. It was a substantial looking burger full of moist chicken and lots of sauce and flavour. Somehow I ate it all but not all the fries that were well-cooked (not blonde) and crunchy.

Miss Arabella ordered the Black N Blue Cheeseburger (1,500CFP) with salade verte, tomato, onions, a steak pattie, bacon and ‘sauce au bleu’. She only ate half of it as found the flavour very strong as wasn’t expecting a blue cheese sauce – should have paid attention in French class!

Now that would be a burger with ‘blue cheese’ sauce!

Alfie wanted a pizza and chose the Kurt Cobain (2,200CFP). It came with BBQ sauce, onions, capsicum, chicken, bacon and mozzarella. Had we known the size of it we would have suggested he share it as it arrived in the shape of an electric guitar and was almost as long as the table. It was in one piece and he was given a sharp knife to cut it and being able to wield a sharp knife (forbidden at home) totally lit up his face.

The Kurt Cobain pizza

Now Carl, having eaten an enormous breakfast of a bowl of fruit, two poached eggs, a cheese omelette, an English muffin and a pastry, followed by a baguette from the famous patisserie in Noumea then followed by a mango milkshake from a famous milkbar in Noumea; said he wasn’t going to dine and instead just have a water. But he couldn’t let Arabella’s burger go to waste and certainly Alfie needed some assistance with that pizza.

Sitting as close as we could to the Chev Bel Air

Carl said it was the best pizza he’s ever eaten.

Lounging around in Baie Des Citrons

It would have been wonderful if we’d had room to try the desserts. There was an American Brownie, a New York Cheesecake, ‘The King’ Chocolate Mousse that apparently is an Elvis Presley recipe, a banana split, peach melba and a mini buffet of desserts. But we just couldn’t! It had been a day of definite over-indulging and I was feeling like I needed someone to roll me back onto the ship.

Sounds like a fun place! Love the look of those booths. I think Alfie’s pizza was the winner — it sure looks good. One of the downsides of a cruise vacation is there’s so much to eat (both on the ship itself, and all the fun destinations you visit) that it’s all too easy to eat all the time! It’s a good time, though.

I’m not sure why they go to all that trouble teaching kids to do a language in this country. They never seem to practice speaking it rendering it useless when they need it. A great find cafe wise charlie though I am depressed to see the mini fier basket has reached there too, Some one needs to throw them away with all of those pieces of slate!. What an ingenious pizza though!

Hi Rebecca, it was almost impossible to be GF on the cruise and today I’m putting up my ‘Onboard Dining’ post tonight (hopefully) so you can read all about it. However, if you do have intolerances, you can let the ship know and they work around that. I didn’t advice them that I try to be DF and GF and just went with the flow. I decided it would be two weeks off my diet!

I grew up near the little town in Washington State, US, where Kurt Cobain was born. I remember being with friends and hearing his music on the radio for the first time. We were a couple hundred miles away from his hometown at the time, and we were excited that he’d become so famous, that his music was being played in another small town sooo far away. Ha!
Wow. If only he had lived to see that not only is his music now world wide, but they are naming pizzas after him in Noumea! I find that oddly happy and sad at the same time.

But, moving on, I have immensely enjoyed the stories of your cruise and your travels to all the beautiful islands. Thanks so much for sharing! It has been a highlight of my day to check in and read about all your adventures.

I am surprised to see how American the restaurant is. I would expect to see it in Hollywood…it would fit right in. A Kurt Cobain pizza? LOL! I must say I wouldn’t personally have chosen to put him on my menu. Perhaps someone with a little happier history to go with that pizza guitar. This amused me to no end, Charlie. It must have been a fun and unexpected place to visit and enjoy such an entertaining meal. 🙂

Wow that guitar shape pizza is amazing. I can see my son pick it up and pretend to play. 😀 I studied 2 year of Spanish but I don’t remember a thing. If they put the pink car everywhere, this place would be very popular (but maybe strange. hehe). I’m sure everyone want to sit and dine in that car.